Can Selfless Acts Help You Reach Enlightenment?

[Wind]

Can they? To which extent? Aren't they more helpful than self-enquiry?

[zazed]

If you can do a true selfless act, you already are enlightened.

Most people who do selfless acts are wonderful people. But they most often do the acts for their own ego.
Being selfless and helping others is how some people define their sense of self. In this way it is the opposite from being enlightened.
Defining ourselves as this nice person who helps others, will make us feel good and at peace, but that peace is an illusion that arises from boosting the ego. The ego thinks: "i am great, i am this selfless person helping others."

It's like a child doing something to surprise his mum when she comes home. The end goal here is not the helping itself, but the child's imagined reward of happiness and joy when she comes home and is happy because of the child's actions.

Be that as it may, helping people is often very rewarding. And it's an easier place to meditate from love, than from hate and strife.

Everyone already is enlightened. But they mistakenly think they are this self, running around, doing things.

[Dawson]

If you do a 'selfless act' with the intent of becoming enlightened, by definition, it isn't selfless.

[zazed]

@Dawson Love how you condense all my words to a simple phrase  

[Nahm]

Any interaction with anything helps me to relate and see that I am the everything. 

Interactions that invoke emotion due so much more so.

Empathy, mirror neurons, etc, are evidence of me feeling like someone or something else feels, because everything is one.

[hinawashi]

This is how I see it. Selfless acts don't make you enlightened, it is merely an indicator of enlightenment. Suppose I put litmus into a solution and it turns red or blue, it doesn't mean the litmus paper made the solution adic or basic all of a sudden. The solution was already acidic or basic before the litmus was thrown in there.

One of the underlying principles of enlightenment is that you don't put values into anything. A lot of people put values into stuffs and actions, including selfless acts. So let's say I put a lot of hours into community service and help the poor and whatnot, and I derive my value, or self-worth from that. That's not enlightenment, nor is it a tool to help you get there.

Enlightenment comes first, then comes selflessness, because what enlightenment does is that it dissolves the self and once that happens everything you do will be selfless.

[Psychonaut]

Being selfless has nothing to do with enlightenment. You can be a complete asshole and not give a care about anyone and still be enlightened. You won't get your street cred enlightenment points from fellow humans. But at this stage you couldn't care less and can't stop but laughing at people trying to pinpoint enlightenment to certain behaviours.

Altruism is mostly a game of the ego.

I like this definition of altruism from zoology.

"behaviour of an animal that benefits another at its own expense."

In the human world true altruism is scarce.

Whenever you do something to get something out of it it might be a good idea to step back and reavaluate. 

[Gopackgo]

1 hour ago, Psychonaut said:

Being selfless has nothing to do with enlightenment. You can be a complete asshole and not give a care about anyone and still be enlightened. You won't get your street cred enlightenment points from fellow humans. But at this stage you couldn't care less and can't stop but laughing at people trying to pinpoint enlightenment to certain behaviours.

Altruism is mostly a game of the ego.

I like this definition of altruism from zoology.

"behaviour of an animal that benefits another at its own expense."

In the human world true altruism is scarce.

Whenever you do something to get something out of it it might be a good idea to step back and reavaluate. 

Yea the term selfless carries a moral connotation. From what I can tell it is about negating an illusion, not adding a bunch of godly qualities. Changes come, but the self dropping out is entirely different than becoming saintly. 

[h inandout]

Make your friends jealous!  They will slowly follow suite.